Sexist DSK had France in his pants By ANDREA PEYSER
Last Updated: 1:44 AM, May 26, 2011 Posted: 1:40 AM, May 26, 2011
Dominique Strauss-Kahn did not act alone. Throughout France, hands are as dirty as those of a chambermaid tasked with scrubbing a $3,000 Sofitel suite.
The upstairs-downstairs saga of the Big Shot who allegedly sexually brutalized the maid did not hatch out of the ether. It is as if the majority of the citizens of France -- locked into 1950s-style notions of sexism, misogyny and racism -- was complicit in the horrific, accused deed.
This is more than a tale about the (now-ex) International Monetary Fund chief and the working gal who cried rape. The sordid affair brings into sharp relief the vast cultural, legal and moral differences between a young United States and a cowardly and decayed France. A nation where the word of a poor, black immigrant is inferior to that of a rich, white knucklehead.
And it has further strained already tenuous relations between the United States and France, that primary spoke in the America-loathing Axis of Weasel, a moniker France earned in 2003 when it betrayed the US and our allies by refusing to support foreign policies.
Yet the French displayed a twisted kind of backbone when its citizens aided and abetted Strauss-Kahn, from his rise as a horny politician to his starring role as alleged perpetrator of a crime that, in this country, is considered a diabolically violent abuse of power.
But to many in France, attempted rape is something quite different: Free love gone bad.
A joke.
If you want to be revolted by a national mindset proudly on display in the Gallic nation, look no further than this hideous nugget penned by social commentator Sophie de Menthon. A woman.
Frenchmen of all political stripes and social castes, she wrote, have "stood there aghast," confronted with images of DSK, as he's affectionately known, handcuffed and under arrest in New York. She went further.
"It creates feelings and reactions which go far beyond what is, essentially, after all just another minor alleged crime."
Minor. Alleged. Crime.
Good Lord. So sexual abuse is but a small hiccup. Like sticking gum under a subway seat. In this worldview, DSK's guilt or innocence is of little consequence. That's because the sexual assault of a poor, powerless lady is nothing at all. But arresting a rich, powerful man is, by definition, the more egregious offense.
Last weekend, a few French feminists -- though the phrase sounds like a contradiction in terms -- came out to protest the misogyny on display in the case of DSK, and victims of sexual assault have just begun to speak up. They won't speak out for long.
Victims might start by muzzling former Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou, now a parliamentarian. She called pics of the man in handcuffs, "incredibly brutal, violent and cruel" -- but uttered not a word in defense of the alleged victim, a cipher.
"A horrible global lynching!" was how Jean-Pierre Chevenement, a leftist French senator, described the images.
Writing in The Daily Beast, DSK's philosopher pal, Bernard-Henri Levy, actually wrote that the judge in the case "pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other." Dang!
"Do you know who I am?" DSK reportedly said while allegedly attacking the maid.
Le Figaro and Paris Match helpfully named not only DSK's alleged victim, but for some reason, her 15-year-old daughter. Le Figaro also made a point of giving the accuser's height -- tall -- as if to prove that the dwarfish DSK couldn't possibly have physically overcome the woman.
As the case proceeds, infuriating revelations emerged that friends of the accused fiend tried to buy off his victim through payments offered to her dirt-poor relatives in Guinea. Proudly, they refused.
All I can say is -- thank goodness Strauss-Kahn is to be tried in America, not France.
I am proud to live in a nation where the word of a poor, frightened maid can be taken seriously, and her wealthy, self-important, accused tormentor can be frog-marched to jail.
Just like any other accused felon.